@bxe1234: “Which would you most like to try: luge/skeleton/bobsled? Also, if you could two-man luge with a Phil, who would it be?”

I’m terrified of speed. I’ve never gone skiing and probably will never go skiing for this reason. So I’ll take bobsled, because that’s the one where I can push like a lunatic and sit in the back with my head down until the whole thing’s over. And as far as two-man luge is concerned, I want to be on the bottom so I can’t see where I’m going and have an excuse to just shut my eyes and scream. Ben Revere is very light so he wouldn’t crush me in the high-gee turns, and he seems like a patient man who wouldn’t stab me to death after I’d been screaming in his ear for a 75-second trip down the chute. Continue reading…

So I’ve been encountering a phenomenon recently where journalists gripe about how, in the context of a postgame interview, “Talk about…” isn’t a real question. And it’s not. “Talk about how Cole Hamels got out of that sixth-inning jam” is not literally a question. But I don’t know why this is an issue–beat reporting isn’t Jeopardy. Everything doesn’t need to be in the form of a question. The object of the postgame scrum is to get the best, most relevant sound byte you can, and if you’re focusing on how the reporter generates that response (which will likely run without the question that prompted it), you’re reaching into “hilariously missing the point” territory.

@LeftysCurve: “Your projected starting outfield come, say, May 1”

Pretty sure it’s Brown, Revere and Byrd, unless someone gets hurt. I can’t imagine that changing based on the preseason and a month’s worth of games. Revere and Brown are both cheap and played quite well last year, and Byrd just got inked to a multi-year contract after having a better 2013 than either of them. This is probably the most stable outfield situation the Phillies have had to start a season since 2010 or so? After that, Raul Ibanez started sucking, Jayson Werth walked and Domonic Brown came up, so things got a little unpredictable. The earliest–again, barring injury–that I can see this changing is if Byrd gets flipped at the deadline. Continue reading…

Greetings. Let’s talk about how great it is that Bobby Abreu is on the Phillies again.

@Wzeiders: “how great is it that Bobby Abreu is a Phillie again, even if it’s just a fleeting dream I’m scared to wake from?”

It’s pretty great, I tell ya. It’s pretty great. I try not to swear above the break in these posts, but my official position on Bobby Abreu is that if you don’t love him, or at least recognize what a great player he was, you can fuck off and die.

One of my Facebook friends shared a photo essay of someone discovering a 15-foot snake crawling out of their toilet. The overwhelming majority of snake-related fear porn on the internet is fake, like the one that was going around about the boa constrictor in India swallowing the town drunk whole while he was passed out, so I presume nobody’s actually pulled a reticulated python out of their commode. But it’s enough to make you uneasy dropping a deuce in your own home, which is a more unsettling feeling than you’d think. Snakes are creepy and terrifying, and so is Facebook.

@djmofsett: “Which Phillies player reminds you the most of your own dad? Which players dad do you want to meet? Da-doo-da doo-do.”

Not being particularly eager to untangle that particular Freudian knot right now (for reasons that include the likelihood that my dad will probably read this and get angry if I compare him to the wrong player–SORRY, POPS, YOU WERE A REAL JONATHAN PETTIBONE OF A ROLE MODEL!), I’m going to pass on the first question and skip straight to the second.

I know y’all are probably sick of hearing about the Hall of Fame, but I’ve got one last parting shot: I don’t think taking the vote away from the writers is the answer, because if you assign it to a special committee, it will concentrate power in a smaller, less empirically inclined, more reactionary group than ever. Just look at the NHL, or even baseball’s Hall of Fame itself–most of the most embarrassing members of the Hall of Fame are Veterans Committee candidates who made the grade based on cronyism and old grudges. If the Hall of Fame does commission a special panel, I bet Jay Jaffe isn’t on it, despite his having come closer than anyone else to quantifying the Hall of Fame case and writing more extensively on the debate than any other writer. Maybe you get John Thorn. Maybe you get Bill James as a form of analytical tokenism. But I guarantee you that panel produces worse results than an electorate of sportswriters.

If I had unlimited time and this month to do over again, I’d try to craft an alternative electoral system to try to get around the issues posed by the 75 percent threshold and 10-vote maximum. But I only remembered that I owned a copy of Arend Lijphart’s Patterns of Democracy, so that wasn’t in the cards. Though if you’re at all interested in comparative electoral systems, it’s worth the cent a used copy will run you on Amazon.

This is a post that’s kind of about baseball’s Hall of Fame in which I tell you how to think and how to act. It’s a post that I should have given a title with a colon or starting with the word “On,” or incorporating a Dr. Strangelove joke–in short, the kind of title I used to use for 70 percent of my baseball writing before I realized those tropes were more childish than profound. This post uses baseball to make a larger point about society and public discourse. It will be, in a word, insufferable.

This morning, Ken Gurnick of MLB.com posted his Hall of Fame ballot. I apologize in advance to the Dodger beat writer, because I’m going to call him Tom Grunick at some point and not catch myself–Broadcast News is one of my favorite movies and to be honest, I’ve spent much more time with William Hurt’s character in that movie (which is to say, any time), than I have with Ken Gurnick.

But the point is this: Gurnick voted for Jack Morris, and Jack Morris alone, for the Hall of Fame. And the internet blew up. I use the phrase “roundly pilloried” a lot, but it applies well here. I’ve made no secret of my own Hall of Fame rationale: I’m generally a big Hall person, I value peak over longevity, I make some allowances for qualitative or emotional influence on my evaluations (leading to, for instance, my preference for Larry Walker over Tom Glavine), and when it comes to performance-enhancing drugs, I am on the most liberal end of the spectrum: if a player is eligible, I’d consider him. That’s how I’d vote, and I believe it’s the best way to vote, otherwise I’d have some other opinions. I don’t believe it’s the only way–if a voter prefers a smaller circle, for instance, or if he or she isn’t so comfortable with PEDs and chooses not to vote for a player who tested positive, or who was credibly accused of wrongdoing, I’d disagree, but such a ballot wouldn’t merit the treatment Gurnick got today.

I’m shocked that nobody asked me this before now, but I guess there’s a certain point past which nobody cares about my opinion. Anyway, I answered this last year, and nobody got in, so a lot of my answers are the same…actually, look at that, it was Dubs who asked for my hypothetical Hall of Fame ballot last year too, the sneaky bastard.

I’m down to my last month or so in Madison (side note, if anyone wants to pay me to write or edit anything, I’m very much available), and let me say this: I am entirely sick of snow. We got about eight inches dumped on us in what seemed like an hour, and I’m so tired of having to go five months between grass sightings. This place is so cold all the doctors are named Yuri and write horrible poetry. I took the garbage out on Monday and got icicles on my beard and in my nose after about 30 seconds. I’m just so done with snow.

But I’ll say this–it being 10 below up here isn’t even close to the most miserable weather I’ve ever experienced. Because I’d take this winter over Philadelphia winter anytime. Philadelphia winter is 34 and overcast and unrelenting sleet and freezing rain and wind and I want to punch John Bolaris in the forehead right now just thinking about winter weather in Philadelphia. The worst place on the planet in winter is on the campus of Temple University, under the footbridge between Gladfelter and Anderson halls, where if you step out you get your ears frozen off from the sleet and belted by wind so strong you wonder if NASA’s testing a static airframe for a new hypersonic rocket plane. It is the most miserable place I’ve ever been.

Your questions.

@dj_mosfett: “Over this Holiday Period, I have consumed much Egg Nog. What are your thoughts on Nog? What is your preferred Nog recipe?”

Bill told me, when this post was in draft mode, that I’d turned off comments. I have no idea how I did this, so I don’t know how to turn them back on, and while Bill apparently edited the post while I wasn’t looking, he might not have reenabled the comments. We’ll see how this goes.

@jenningsjt: “If RAJ was fired and the city decided Hinkie should run both the Sixers and the Phillies, what would be his first few moves?”

I think the first thing he’d do is try to trade for draft picks, maybe take on a couple bad contracts to do so, figuring he’s got the cap space…then come hurtling back to the ground when he realizes you can’t trade draft picks and baseball doesn’t have a salary cap. Continue reading…